The big young man with the shoulders of a bureau would never have been
taken for a student if he had not been crossing the campus with a too
small cap precariously perched on his too much hair, and if he had not
been swinging a strapful of those thin, weary-worn volumes that look to
be text-books and not novels. The eye-glasses set on his young nose
mainly accented his youth. If he had not depended on them he would have
made a splendid center rush. Instead, he was driven to the ’varsity
crew, where he won more glory than in the class-room. He paused before a
ground-floor window of the oldest of the old dormitories. That
window-seat as usual displayed the slim and gangling form of a young man
who was usually to be found there stretched out on his stomach and
reading or writing with solemn absorption. It was necessary to call him
repeatedly before he came back from the mist he surrounded himself with:
“Hay! ’Gene! Oh, Vick! ’Gene Vickery! Hay you!”
“Hay yourself! Oh, hey-o, Bret Winfield, h’are you?”
“Rotten! Say—you going to the theater to-night?”
“I usually do. What’s the play?”
“‘A Friend in Need.’ Ran six months in New York.”
“All right, I’ll go.”
“Better get a seat under cover of the balcony.”
“Why?”
“Looks like a big night to-night. The Freshmen are going to bust up the
show.”
“Really? Why?”
Vickery was only a post-graduate, in his first year at Leroy University.
He had gone through the home-town schools and a preparatory school and a
smaller college, before he had moved on to Leroy to earn a Ph.D. He had
long ago given up his ambitions to replace Shakespeare. So now he asked
in his ignorance why the Freshmen of Leroy must break up the play. And
Winfield answered from his knowledge:
“Because about this time of year the Freshman class always busts up a
show. It’s one of the sacredest traditions of our dear old Alum Mater.
Last year’s Freshies put a big musical comedy on the blink. Kidnapped
half the chorus girls. This year there’s no burlesque in view, so the
cubs are reduced to pulling down a high comedy.”
“Won’t the faculty do anything about it?”
“Faculty won’t know anything about it till the morning papers tell how
many policemen were lost and how much damage was done to the theater. If
you’re going, either take an umbrella or sit under the balcony, for
there will be doings.”
“I’ll be there, Bret.”
“I wish I could have you with me, but a gang of us Seniors have taken a
front box together. S’long!”
“S’long!”
Vickery went back to his text-book. He was to be a professor of Greek.
He had almost forgotten that he had ever fallen in love with an actress.
He had kept no track of stage history.
His acquaintance with Bret Winfield had been casual until his sister
Dorothy came on to spend a few days near her brother. Dorothy had grown
up to be the sort of woman her childhood prophesied—big, beautiful,
placid, very noble at her best and stupid at her worst. Her big eyes
were the Homeric “ox-eyes,” and Eugene in the first flush of his first
Greek had called her thence Bo-opis, which he shortened later to “Bo.”
The bo-optic Dorothy made a profound impression on Bret Winfield, and he
cultivated Eugene thereafter on her account. He had a rival in the
scientific school, Jim Greeley, a fellow-townsman of Winfield’s.
Greeley’s matter-of-fact soul was completely congenial to Dorothy, but
the two young men hated each other with great dignity, and Dorothy
reveled in their rivalry. She was quite forgotten, however, when matters
of real college moment were under way—such as the Freshman assault on
the drama.
The news of the riot-to-be percolated through the two thousand students
without a word reaching the ears of the faculty or the officers of the
theater. There was no reason to expect trouble on this occasion. There
had been no football or baseball or other contest to excite the
students. They made a boisterous audience before the curtain rose—but
then they always did. They called to each other from crag to crag. They
whistled and stamped in unison when the curtain was a moment late; but
that was to be expected in college towns. Strangely, students have been
always and everywhere rioters.
The first warning the audience had of unusual purposes came when a round
of uproarious applause greeted a comedian’s delivery of a bit of very
cheap wit which had been left in because the author declined to waste
time polishing the seat-banging part of his first act. In this country
an audience that is extremely displeased does not hiss or boo; it
applauds sarcastically and persistently. The poor actor who had aimed to
hurry past the line found himself held up by the ironic hand-clapping.
When he tried to go on, it broke out anew.
An actor cannot disclaim or apologize for the lines he has to speak,
however his own prosperities are involved in them. So poor Mr. Tuell had
now to stand and perspire while the line he had begged the author to
delete provoked the tempest.
Whenever the fuming comedian opened his mouth to speak the applause
drowned him. It soon fell into a rhythm of one-two, one-two-three,
one-two, one-two-three. Tuell could only wait till the claque had grown
weary of its own reproof. Then he went on to his next feeble witticism,
another play upon words so childish that it brought forth cries of,
“Naughty, naughty!”
The other members of the company gathered in the wings, as uncomfortable
as a band of early martyrs waiting their turns to appear before the
lions. To most of them this was their first encounter with a mutinous
audience.
Audiences are usually a chaos of warring tastes and motives which must
somehow be given focus and unity by the actors. That was the hardest
part of the day’s work—to get the house together. To-night they must
face a ready-made audience with a mind of its own—and that hostile.
The actors watched the famous “first old woman,” Mrs. John Vining, sail
out with the bravery of a captive empress marching down a Roman street
in chains. She was greeted with harsh cries of, “Grandma!” and, “Oh,
boys, Granny’s came!”
Mrs. Vining smiled indulgently and went on with her lines. The applause
broke out and continued while she and Mr. Tuell conducted a dumb-show.
Then an abrupt silence fell just in time to emphasize the banality of
her next speech.
“You ask of Claribel? Speaking of angels, here she comes now.”
At the sound of her name the actress summoned clutched the cross-piece
of the flat that hid her from the audience. She longed for courage to
run away. But actors do not run away, and she made ready to dance out on
the stage and gush her brilliant first line: “Oh, auntie, there you are.
I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Sheila had always hated the entrance because of its bustling
unimportance. It was exciting enough to-night. No sooner had Mrs. Vining
announced her name than there was a salvo of joy from the mob.
“Oh, girls, here comes Claribel!”
Some one stood up and yelped, “Three hearty cheers and a tigress for
Claribel.”
Sheila fell back into the wings as the clamor smote her. But she had
been seen and admired. There was a hurricane of protest against her
retreat:
“Come on in, Claribel; the water’s fine!” “Don’t leave the old farm,
Claribel; we need you!” “Peekaboo! I see You Hiding behind the chair.”
Each of the mutineers shrieked something that he thought was funny, and
laughed at it without heeding what else was shouted. The result was
deafening.
Eugene Vickery’s heart was set aswing at the glimpse of Sheila Kemble.
The sight of her name on the program had revived his boyhood memories of
her. He rose to protest against the hazing of a young girl, especially
one whose tradition was so sweet in his remembrance, but he was in the
back of the house and his cry of “Shame!” was lost in the uproar, merely
adding to it instead of quelling it.
Bret Winfield in a stage box had seen Sheila in the wings for some
minutes before her entrance. He knew nothing of her except that her
beauty pleased him thoroughly and that he was sorry to see how scared
she was when she retreated.
He saw also how plucky she was, for, angered by the boorish unchivalry
of the mob, she marched forth again like a young Amazon. At the full
sight of her the Freshmen united in a huge noise of kisses and murmurs
of, “Yum-yum!” and cries of, “Me for Claribel!” “Say, that’s some gal!”
“Name and address, please!” “I saw her first!” “Second havers!” “Mamma,
buy me that!” She was called a peach, a peacherino, a pippin, a
tangerine, a swell skirt—anything that occurred to the uninspired.
Sheila felt as if she were struck by a billow. Her own color swept past
the bounds of the stationary blushes she had painted on her cheeks. She
came out again and began her line: “Oh, auntie—”
It was as if echo had gone into hysterics. Two hundred voices mocked
her: “Oh, auntie!” “Oh, auntie!” “Oh, auntie!”
She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry, she wanted to run, she wanted to
fight. She wished that the whole throng had but one ear, that she might
box it.
The stage-manager was shrieking from the wings: “Go on! Don’t stop for
anything!”
She continued her words with an effect of pantomime. The responses were
made against a surf of noise.
Then Eric Folwell, who played the hero, came on. He was handsome, and
knew it. He was a trifle over-graceful, and his evening coat fitted his
perfect figure almost too perfectly. He was met with pitiless
implications of effeminacy. “Oh, Clarice!” “Say, Lizzie, are you busy?”
“Won’t somebody slap the brute on the wrist?” “My Gawd! ain’t he
primeval?” “Oh, you cave-girl!”
As if this were not shattering enough, some of the students had provided
themselves with bags of those little torpedoes that children throw on
the Fourth of July. One of these exploded at Folwell’s feet. At the
utterly unexpected noise he jumped, as a far braver man might have done,
taken thus unawares.
This simply enraptured the young mob, and showers of torpedoes fell
about the stage. It fairly snowed explosives. The gravel scattered in
all directions. A pebble struck Sheila on the cheek. It smarted only a
trifle, but the pain was as nothing to the sacrilege.
Somehow the play struggled on to the cue for the entrance of the heroine
of the play. Miss Zelma Griffen was the leading woman. She was supposed
to arrive in a taxicab, and the warning “honk” of it delighted the
audience. She was followed on by a red-headed chauffeur who asked for
his fare, which she borrowed from the hero, then passed to the
chauffeur, who thanked her and made his exit.
Miss Griffen was a somewhat sophisticated actress with a large record in
college boys. While she waited for her cue, she had cannily decided to
appease the mob by adopting a tone of good-fellowship. She had also
provided herself with a rosette of the college colors. She waved it at
the audience and smiled.
This was a false note. It was resented as a familiarity and a
presumption. This same college had rotten-egged an actor some years
before for wearing a ’varsity sweater on the stage. It greeted Miss
Griffen with a storm of angry protest, together with a volley of
torpedoes.
Miss Griffen, completely nonplussed, gaped for her line, could not
remember a word of it, then ran off the stage, leaving Sheila and Mrs.
Vining and Tuell to take up the fallen torch and improvise the scene.
Sheila made the effort, asked herself the questions Miss Griffen should
have asked her, and answered them. It was her religion as an actress
never to let the play stop.
With all her wits askew, she soon had herself snarled up in a tangle of
syntax in which she floundered hopelessly. The student body railed at
her:
“Oh, you grammar! ’Rah, ’rah, ’rah, night school!”
This insult was too much for the girl. She lost every trace of
self-control.
All this time Bret Winfield had grown angrier and angrier. Bear-baiting
was one thing; but dove-baiting was too cowardly even for mob-action,
too unfair even for a night of sports, unpardonable even in Freshmen. He
was thrilled with a chivalrous impulse to rush to the defense of Sheila,
whose angry beauty had inflamed him further.
He stood up in the proscenium box and tried to call for fair play. He
was unheard and unseen; all eyes were fastened on the stage where the
fluttering actress besought the howling stage-manager to throw her the
line louder.
Winfield determined to make himself both seen and heard. Fellow Seniors
in the box caught at his coat-tails, but he wrenched loose and, putting
a foot over the rail, stepped to the apron of the stage. In his struggle
he lost his eye-glasses. They fell into the footlight trough, and he was
nearly blind.
Sheila, who stood close at hand, recoiled in panic at the sight of this
unheard-of intrusion. The rampart of the footlights had always stood as
a barrier between Sheila and the audience, an impassable parapet.
To-night she saw it overpassed, and she watched the invader with much
the same horror that a nun would experience at seeing a soldier enter a
convent window.
Winfield advanced with hesitant valor and frowned fiercely at the
dazzling glare that beat upward from the footlights.
He was recognized at once as the famous stroke-oar of the crew that had
defeated the historic rivals of Grantham University. He was hailed with
tempest.
Sheila knew neither his fame nor his mission. She felt that he was about
to lay hands on her; all things were possible from such barbarians. Her
knees weakened. She turned to retreat and clung to a table for support.
Suddenly she had a defender. From the wings the big actor who had played
the taxicab-driver dashed forward with a roar of anger and let drive at
Winfield’s face. Winfield heard the onset, turned and saw the fist
coming. There was no time to explain his chivalric motive. He ducked and
the blow grazed his cheek, but the actor’s impetus caught him off his
balance and hustled him on backward till one foot slid down among the
footlights. Three electric bulbs were smashed as he went overboard into
the orchestra.
He almost broke the backs of two unprepared viola-players, but they
eased his fall. He caromed off their shoulder-blades into the
multifarious instruments of the “man in the tin-shop.” One foot thumped
bass-drum with a mighty plop; the other sent a cymbal clanging. His
clutching hands set up a riot of “effects,” and he lay on the floor in a
ruin of orchestral noises, and a bedlam of din from the audience.
By the time he had gathered himself together the curtain had been
lowered and the whole house was in a typhoon.
A dozen policemen who had been hastily summoned and impatiently awaited
by the manager charged down the aisles and seized each a double arm-load
of the nearest rioters. The foremost policeman received Winfield as he
clambered, shamefaced, over the orchestra rail.
Winfield started to explain: “I went up there to ask the fellows to be
quiet.”
The officer, indignant as he was, let out a guffaw of contemptuous
laughter: “Lord love you, kid, if that’s the best lie you can tell,
what’s the use of education?”
Winfield realized the hopelessness of such self-defense. It was less
shameful to confess the misdemeanor than to be ridiculed for so impotent
a pretext. He suffered himself to be jostled up the aisle and tossed
into the patrol-wagon with the first van-load of prisoners. He counted
on a brief stay there, for it was a custom of the college to tip over
the patrol-wagon and rescue the victims of the police.
This year’s Freshmen, however, lacked the necessary initiative and
leadership, and before the lost opportunity could be regained the wagon
had rolled away, leaving the class to eternal ignominy.